


Gliding Till We Soar

by REYDELCASTILL0



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguity, Elytras, FUCK the no romantic relationships tag why is THAT the norm :(, Fireworks, Flying, Gen, POV First Person, Video Game Mechanics, just lemme say that there are no relationships PERIOD, there are no relationships AT ALL, very amatonormative of you ao3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26275132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/REYDELCASTILL0/pseuds/REYDELCASTILL0
Summary: The Player is in control of so much, yet it's never enough for them. They strive for more and when they can't have the skies, they learn to try.
Relationships: No Relationship(s) - Relationship, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Kudos: 5





	Gliding Till We Soar

**Author's Note:**

> Im posting this from my phone so tags are... Very little. But like? It's ambiguous anyways. Heavily ambiguous. So ig the ambiguity tag applies...  
> Tags I wanted to add:  
> Elytras  
> Flying  
> Fireworks
> 
> I also wanted to use a "No relationship" tag but i had to settle for "No romantic relationship(s)"
> 
> EDIT: Sep.18.2020... Added the tags, finally, lol

Chickens and parrots. Feathery friends one often finds themselves attached to. Food or friend, it's our choice. But no one has the heart to eat parrots. They were too cute, flapping their colorful wings and dancing to any tune they hear. Chickens had their charm, too. Absolutely dumb, but extremely resilient. Some people decide to take them as pets, some only farm them for food.  
Bats, phantoms, and dragons. Featherless flyers that we have a complicated relationship with. Bats were cute little creatures and they made mining less lonely (their presence enough to add business to caves). Phantoms haunt our most insane moments, but respect is due. No one quite knows how to be a predator of the night like these fear-inducing flyers. Dragons, on the other hand, are giant and often depicted as an oppressor of people, the foe to strike fear into all foes. The Dragon is the most beautiful of all creatures. Yet we make it a point to slay her? And the truly cruel will hatch her egg and force the child to follow her mother's path. And rinse and repeat.  
(Surely we do not have to fight her? She flies above us all, but if that is enough to be a made an enemy, then I'll have made enemies with us all.)  
Blazes and ghasts. The flyers of the nether. The hottest place in existence and yet they thrive. In a world where most creatures prowl the hot and, at times, scorching grounds, these two beings paved way through the skies. The caverns belong to ghasts and the fortresses to blazes. We make the mistake of trespassing, yet we ignore them for our own selfish goals.  
Vexes and bees. They fly too. Vexes with their torn and menacing fairy like wings and bees with their disproportionate wings. For creatures so small, but so big for their wings, they somehow fly? They challenge the laws of this land when they fly and is that not inspiring? Should we, as people of the land, not learn a lesson from this? Aspire to be great because bees are great, too?  
We challenge everything, but flight has eluded us despite it being available to all these creatures. We make potions to fall slower or to jump higher, yet we still don't fly. We challenge the seas with our frost walker and our boats, or our breathing potions and we utilize breathing conduits. We challenge the nether with our fire resistance and we learned to battle ghasts with their own tactics. We challenge and conquer what we wish, so how is it that we simply fail to do that with the skies?  
(Are we not meant to set our hearts to an objective and accomplish it? Is that not our purpose of existence? I refuse this revelation.)  
When the Players freed the end, we were made aware of new opportunities. End cities, we all call them. Flying air ships and towers with limited access. Floating islands like that of the Dragon's abode separated by vast emptiness. There are Chorus Fruits, too. The fruits that remind us that we have also challenged teleportation. We take the existence and knowledge of the Enderpeople and use it to our advantage, further our own ambitions with the experience of many.  
The End cities... Someone made them according to their needs. Was it the Enderpeople? We have opened a two way gate between the Dragon's abode and their lands, so surely these cities are theirs. These cities must be to accommodate the Enderpeople. They can teleport, having access to all their structures. We've learned to teleport, too, even if it is on borrowed capabilities. So do we follow in their footsteps? Are we doomed to be oppressed by a dragon, or are we here to learn from their mistakes?  
(I will learn from past failures and strive for a future that is of my own volition.)  
We come to learn that the Enderpeople had learned how to fly. They conquered the skies, and of course they did. Their towers and their ships are a testament to it all. They know secrets that we wish to learn and they don't share. They can't (I've tried to ask), but we try to access the new information anyways.  
We have always tried to conquer the skies and when our dreams died out, we were given new hope.  
We find wings and we try our hardest to understand them. We fall at first, unaware of how they must be used. We try to soar, we can only glide. The Players, they wear them in excitement a jump. We all assumed the Players had found the secret to flight. The wings, after all, respond to us the way we wish them to. They spread wide when we will it, the droop when they are of no use to us, and they feel as though they are a part of us.  
The Players, however, quickly forgot that these wings were only extensions, not attachments. There was a need mastery for these wings and they had not mastered anything. They fell, and their fear was heard by all onlookers. We fell (I fell) into the void, terrified of the feeling of emptiness when we realized that our wings would not flap. Terrified of the feeling of emptiness when we spread our wings too late. Terrified of flight when we realized that we were not going to fly, but only glide with a mastery that seems like we fly. We cannot soar.  
(But I want to soar, to fly, and with every moment of my life I was to devote myself to the challenge.)  
Elytras, we've come to call the wings of the Enderpeople, are incapable of being recreated. We lost the first few Elytras we found. They broke to quickly or we lost them to the void. We considered this a great failure, but aware of what they were like, we employed capable people of creating wings.  
We made wings alright, and if mechanical they could flap, but they were not elytras responded to the wearer as though the wearer was winged their entire life.  
Enderpeople knew how to do that, but communication attempts were futile. We couldn't fly, we couldn't soar. Only glide. People take the wings they found or bought and they glide happily. They have already built games and the Players have already mastered the skill of gliding.  
Gliders teacher newbies how to fly. Their ideal position when flying, how to move your body to change directions, how to spread your wings, how to flap. And everyone adores it, despite being bummed that we cannot create elytras. We were all Icarus, but we learned our limits. We found elytras of all shapes and sizes and deemed that enough for us. We took our feathery elytras, or fairy like elytras, are leathery elytras, and we decided that was enough. We were satisfied.  
(Yet I was not. None of it was. We conquer all that we can and we never give up! I will not give up till the skies are mine. I will soar above us all and I do not care if I am hated like the Dragon, because I only wish to conquer the impossible.)  
(Maybe I cannot craft elytras, but I enchant the elytra I own. Mending and unbreaking.)  
(Maybe I cannot craft elytras, but I modify my elytra's appearance. I dye the feathers black.)  
(Maybe I cannot craft elytras, but I can craft fire works. And it's amazing how high we can get fireworks to fly. We cannot fly so we make art works that fly for us and give us a show. All it takes is a little pyrotechnics...)  
(And that's when I had realized that I can conquer the skies.)  
(All it takes is a little pyrotechnics.)  
We fall and we do it with style, but today? Today we'll fly. We stand at the top of cliffs in anticipation. This is the last hope, our last chance to prove ourselves (even if I do it to prove to myself, and only myself, what we are capable of). We've challenged the skies before and we've always failed, but today we look to the skies and we know.  
We know that this is our day. We have been part of many days, but today we'll own it.  
We stare down at the vastness beneath us. It's a long drop, but we're not scared of it. We've learned to embrace the heights. For us gilders, it is our saving grace. We fall with a purpose. Today, we'll fly with one, too.  
We pull out our rockets. We have five each and a flint and steel to ignite it. This is our last option, and we can't guarantee success. The push and pull may not be enough. But the Enderpeople have made these wings to deny all laws of this land. They challenged the laws of the physical plane. Maybe one day we will, but presently, we cannot fathom how elytras function.  
We toe our way closer to the edge and we spread our wings. For good luck, we allow the ends to touch one another as though we were holding hands. We want to succeed, we hope to do so. We will win this battle.  
We hold out the rockets in front of us and prepare to ignite it. Elytras defy so many laws we thought were absolute. Surely a firework will allow us to test just how they do so.  
We hold our breath. The moment of truth, we're sure. Our defining moment. Every Player has their defining moment. A magnificent structure. A redstone contraption. A successful fight.  
We jump, our wings catching the air. Today, our defining moment is to test the skies one last time. Our defining moment is to conquer the last challenge. The sky is the limit. Our defining moment is to surpass it.  
We ignite the fireworks and hold on tightly. The sparks take a moment to reach the charge and for a moment, we are aware of our entire existence. We have done so much, we have come so far. This is our last accomplishment. What will we have if we fail?  
We suddenly become painfully aware of what failure means. It means we've lost, and as Players, the notion is heartbreaking.  
We become doubtful. Our eyes water with a sadness. We were stupid to try this.  
And then we're flying.  
For once we are flying and it means so much to us. We cheer, shouting at each other as we rise high above the clouds. Our doubts are washed away with the floods of pride. We did it! We've done it!  
The skies are ours! Land, sea, nether, end, and finally, the skies.  
The rockets pick us up, our wings tucked into ourselves so that we may go faster. The feathers on our wings ruffle with the force of the air against it. We let go of the rockets, but one of us fails to do so in time and they fall down with a lack of grace.  
We have half a mind to help them, but they recover quickly and glide around slowly. The rest of us decide to continue rising high, hopeful that our fallen friend will join us soon. We learn that we need to pace ourselves with these rockets, as a few of us begin to fall down, their rockets wasted.  
(In the end, I am the last to continue flying, and I fly high, higher than the clouds, and soon I am out of view of the world. The air becomes thin, but the breathlessness is no bother to me. I embrace it alongside my accomplishments.)  
(My last rocket is finished, the firework show of it left beneath me and purposefully, I fall into it.)  
Today, we conquered the skies. Tomorrow, we will learn our new limits for (I) have challenged them and succeeded.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm really proud of this, so I'd like to hear people's thoughts!
> 
> If I made any grammatical mistakes, lapses that need fixing, or mistakes about minecraft, please lemme know! I'd appreciate it a lot


End file.
